Sharing information from documents is generally a manual and time-consuming process. When an individual reads a newspaper or magazine article and wishes to share the article with someone, he must endure a multi-stepped process fraught with frustration and potential for mistake.
A number of conventional means for sharing documents are available, although none are particularly palatable. In the above example, to share the newspaper or magazine article, the individual would have to choose one of the following means: physically tear out or photocopy the article and mail it, photocopy the article and fax it, read the article over the phone, scan the article into a computer and send it electronically, or visit the website for the newspaper or magazine, find the article, then send the uniform resource locator (“URL”) for the website to the desired recipient.
The tasks above are needlessly time consuming and problematic. In the time required to manipulate the physical document and arrange for sending, the recipient could have already read the article and discussed it with the sender, if only the recipient had received the article sooner. Moreover, with all of the effort required on the part of the sender to coordinate sending the document, there is a strong likelihood the sender may lose interest altogether and not even attempt to send the article.